My Name: Matthew Sanborn Smith. My challenge: Write 1000 stories by the time I'm 50 years old. Current story count: 160. Current age: 48. (Yes, I know it will never happen. I push on regardless.)
The One-Thousand is made up of stories that are aimed at publication in professional venues.
I've been published at Tor.com, Nature, and Chizine, among others. Listen to me on the occasional StarShipSofa and every single Beware the Hairy Mango. Shoot me an e-mail at upwithgravity@gmail.com

So the book is a shared world anthology set in a universe in which there are certain fires which can each trace their origin back to one eternal fire discovered in a cave in France long ago. If you step into one of these fires, you might step out from another one, whether it's miles or light years away. You might also get lost forever, unless you're escorted by one of the Ferrymen, people who are able to navigate the space between fires safely. My fellow authors have come up with a wide variety of scenarios for stories set in this world, some of which take place in the past.

My story takes place in the future on planets far from Earth, wherein a trio of feminist revolutionaries from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are on the run, having stolen a very valuable artifact. The guy that's after them has a strong and complicated connection to one of the three. And one of the others seems just a bit insane. There's also a robot, a sociopath and snails. Lots and lots of snails.

As I post this, you have about six and a half hours left to grab a chance to win a free copy of the book from me. Hop on Twitter and retweet one of the contest tweets I've posted this weekend and you're entered to win. That's all there is to it. You can find me here: twitter.com/upwithgravity. You don't even have to follow me, but it would be swell if you did.

To top it all off, here's the beginning of the story to prime your pumpiness:

ABORTED
LOVE WITH CHAOS MOTOR AT LUCKY PIERRE'S

by
Matthew Sanborn Smith

The
ocean filled her head.

Saltwater
packed Shoksi's skull air-foam tight. It filled her gaping mouth and
trickled down into her throat, toward her starving lungs just so. A
little more. A little more.

Indroid!
Shoksi's mind screamed to her onboard systems. Which
way is up?
Eight hundred and ninety three arrows, fluorescent orange in the
green sea, swam past her vision like a school of fish. They pointed
toward her feet. She flipped over and pushed her cold sluggish
muscles for whatever they had left.

Shoksi
broke through the skin. Her sinuses were on fire, her hearing bubbled
and muted. Her throat spasmed between sucking in air and coughing up
water in spatters and glugs. Through dripping curls she saw Tambi's
head bobbing along the dark waters. They weren't far from a beach,
thank god. Crowds hooted from the shore. The sky was pink.

“Where's
Asha?” Tambi cried.

“I'll
find her,” Shoksi said in a phlegm-choked voice. But as she fought
for breath for the dive she saw a large form rising up beneath them.
A mini-sub? Standing on top of it was that fool of a Firewalker.
Asha's gloved fists broke the surface first, then her head with a
great sucking gasp. Whatever she stood on knocked Shoksi off balance
as it caught up all three of them. Shoksi fell back down, soaked her
head again before her rear end hit the platform. She came into the
air once more, wiped her fingers across her eyes and pushed her heavy
hair aside. What the hell was going on?

“Yes!
Yes!” Asha was shouting to the sky. She turned to the people on
shore and pumped her fists. They ate it up. Whatever had rescued the
three women had raised edges and began to resemble a raft as it
drained. Bone white and navy blue, it sported a texture like a
basketball. Shoksi felt lighter, even out of the water. Less gravity
here. A low-flying seabird swooped close enough that the air smacked
her as it passed.

The raft
said something to them in what sounded like English.

“Lingala,”
Shoksi said with a cough. “Or even French.”

"Sorry
about that, ladies," the raft said in accented French, as it
swept them toward the nearby shore. "People here like to
exercise what they think is a sense of humor." It extended a bit
of its edge into a hand shape, pointing into the air opposite the
shore. A thin plastic pipe rose about six meters above the water. A
Flame erupted from a brass fitting at its top. Across the sky beyond
that was projected a replay of the three women emerging from that
Flame and falling into the ocean below. Then idiot Asha rising from
the ocean like a rockstar. The people on the beach were lined up
waiting for them.

Shoksi
instinctively went for her collapsible automatic. Kill them all, men
first. But sadly, her hand slapped empty webbing on her pant leg.
That's right. Tambi had said no weapons. Damned Tambi. Shoksi vomited
a little sea water, only partially over the edge of the raft. She
felt the alkaline burn of bile up inside her nose.

“What
the hell kind of piece of shit Firewalker are you?” she shouted at
Asha.

“Are
you kidding?” Asha asked, looking down at her. “You should be
thrilled! I had no idea we were going to come through alive!”

“What?”

“She's
not a real Firewalker,” Tambi said. Her long horse face wasn't
looking at Shoksi, but toward their reception committee.

“You're
telling me this now?”

“You
can't let a real Firewalker in on a Church heist! You know that!”

“I'm
almost a Firewalker!” Asha said.

“Almost?”

A cloud of
odd insects converged around the raft, each one hovering rather than
buzzing about. Cameras. To Shoksi there was no such thing as good
publicity. There were others higher up in the Culture Clash that
handled that better than she did. She didn't know what this was, but
she did know it wasn't part of the plan.

“Tell
me you still have the motor!” Shoksi said to Tambi, remembering
what had brought them to this point.

“I
don't have your strength,” Tambi said holding up the little device
by the handle, “But nothing would make me let go of this.”

“Thank
god! Let's hope the water hasn't ruined it.”

“If
it was that easy, it would have been ruined already.”

“Everybody's
white.” Asha said, studying the shore. She still stood, as if this
raft was her personal chariot. “I mean everybody.”

"We
must be far out," Tambi said. "These people's ancestors
probably left Earth when North America and Europe were still
wealthy.”

“Australia,”
the raft said.

“Same
thing. Boat, we
need to get back to that Flame. This isn't the world we wanted."

“There
are plenty of other Flames on shore,” the raft said. “A lot
easier to reach too.”

“Plenty?”

“Welcome
to Pearth,” it said. “P-E-A-R-T-H. I guarantee you haven't seen
anything like it before.”